Rivals stranded as Team N
Bosses believe time is running out for others to replicate grinding system c
Team New Zealand bosses believe the chances of their rivals being able to successfully replicate the Kiwi syndicate’s radical “pedalstal” grinding innovation ahead of this year’s America’s Cup are remote.
Emirates Team New Zealand yesterday officially launched their sleek new 50ft race boat they hope will reclaim the Auld Mug in Bermuda this year. The launch, held at Team NZ’s Beaumont St base in Auckland was more ceremonial than revealing.
The cat was out of the bag, so to speak, when Team NZ took the boat out for a spin on the Waitemata earlier this week and eagle-eyed observers spotted the unconventional grinding set-up, in which the handles had been replaced by pedals.
The surprise innovation set the America’s Cup world in a spin and was the key talking point at yesterday’s launch.
While the sight of a peloton on the water is a novelty for sailing fans, the Team NZ crew have had quite a lot of time to get used to the idea. Operations manager Kevin Shoebridge said the innovation had been nearly three years in the development.
The Kiwi syndicate deliberately kept it under wraps and fitted out their test boats with traditional grinding platforms to ensure their rivals, whose spies are ever-present in Auckland, were not given the opportunity to replicate the set-up.
“We’ve actually been working on this a couple of years now and done a huge amount of work behind the scenes to make sure the system was viable. We’d all thought about it in the early days, but to actually turn it into a real working system took a hell of a lot of work to really see the true benefit,” said Shoebridge.
“We didn’t want to launch our first boat with it on, even though